Sitting is the New Smoking

 

 

Studies done by the Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and others show that prolonged sitting, such as millions of Americans do every day at work, can damage the heart, increase the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and elevated cholesterol. Excessive sitting also raises the prospects of contending with obesity, your anxiety levels might rise, and you can also be faced with back issues. In addition to this collection of concerns, the risk of blood clots and the potential of certain cancers will also increase due to prolonged inactivity. This includes colon, lung and endometrial cancer, while older women also face greater risk of experiencing breast cancer. 

A 2019 study of 150,000 Australians over age 45 who were followed for nine years looked at how much exercise was required just to offset the effect of sitting for 6 or more hours a day, and the results were sobering.

“In our study, sitting time was associated consistently with both overall premature mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality in the least physically active groups – those doing under 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity per week,” Professor Stamatakis, one of the study authors, said. That is about 20 minutes of "vigorous" exercise each and every day - just to offset the possible damage caused but so much sitting.

“For example," Stanatakis adds, "people who were physically inactive and sat for more than eight hours per day had 107 percent higher risk for cardiovascular death compared to those who did at least one hour physical activity per day and sat less than four hours.”

According to a 2018 article in Time Magazine, only 23% of Americans get that much exercise while only half of Americans get any exercise at all.

If you are forced, for whatever reason, to sit for hours every day here are some step you can take to minimize the damage.

- Set a timer and get up and walk around for at least 5 minutes every hour.

- Do a few stretches while seated once or twice every hour.

- Find things you can do while standing like speaking on the phone.

But the bottom line is, when work is over, get moving.